The Mirrored Heavens (34 page)

“Would that have been such a terrible outcome?” asks the Operative.

“Now that,” says Sarmax, “depends on your point of view.” He gestures at the ramps and ladders stacked about him. “You see before you the industry of a new era, Carson. We live in the dawn times, old friend. Humanity is poised to boil out beyond the Earth-Moon system. The red planet will be colonized en masse within the next two decades. The prospectors are even now testing the tug of the gas giants. The Oort is surrendering her secrets to the probes. It’s all there for the taking, Carson. And it all makes me say I don’t give a fuck if you take me down. I don’t give a damn about the Rain or anybody else. Let them squabble. Let them plot. What does it matter when history itself is at last coming into focus?”

“I’m sure the Rain couldn’t say it any better,” says the Operative.

“But you and I know that all they’re really doing is playing the same old game.”

“Which is?”

“Power. They want it all, Carson. They’re using all of us to make it happen.”

“Including you, Leo?”

“I’m sure they’d like to. One more reason why I took myself out of the equation. One more reason I content myself with commerce. Leave the politics to others, Carson. Leave the games to those who would play them.”

“Is that a statement or an invitation?”

“What makes you think it’s not both?”

“Tell me about the latter.”

“You already know it. You’re the best I ever trained. You’re the man whose instincts were always closest to my own. You want to set up shop for yourself. You want it so badly you’d shut your own razor out of the picture. Hell of a move, Carson. Only you would try it. Not that it mattered in the end. You were always going to have to venture into my garden. You were always going to have to descend into what I built beneath it.”

“Not if I’d broken you upstairs,” says the Operative.

“But you didn’t,” says Sarmax. “It was almost the other way. I fully expected to pull your body out from under rubble.”

“You may yet,” says the Operative.

“The suspense is killing me.”

“Lynx knew the mine was down here, Leo. But he thought it was abandoned decades ago. He didn’t think there was any connection between it and the surface fortress. Especially not when the maps assured him of that fact.”

“Then he’s a fool, Carson. You were right to cut him loose.”

“On the contrary,” says the Operative. “I was inspired to do some research on my own. I tapped into Shackleton’s archives. I learned everything I could about this mine’s dimensions. So when I ended up in the vicinity, I knew how close the labyrinth was taking me to the main chambers. And if I’d bought the farm anyway, I figured we could always settle this in Valhalla.”

“Well,” says Sarmax, “now you don’t even have to wait.”

“I’ve already waited far too long,” says the Operative.

“We both have, Carson. We both know it. Look at us. We’re practically old men. You’ve been around for half a century. I’ve been on the loose for even longer. Not for us are the ways of the new breed. Not for us the zeal of the latest contenders. Turn your back on this whole thing, man. Turn your back on that crazy plan. You know that’s what you want. An alliance between us was where this was always going. We’ll put all our energy into pushing it outward. We’ll shove the frontier out to where time mills dust into forever. You and I, Carson. This is where it all begins.”

“And ends,” says the Operative.

He steps backward into space. Sarmax whips his arms up, lets flame erupt from his wrists. Fire shoots through the space where the Operative just stood—but he falls below the level of the platform, tumbles down amidst a webwork of support beams. He starts his jets, roars into a new maze. Lasers streak down from on high as Sarmax dashes to the edge.

“Keep running and you might actually win,” he sneers.

“Exactly,” says the Operative.

He fires his last micromissiles. They explode amidst the beams. The edifice above him starts to sway. Sarmax leaps from it, blasts upward. The Operative emerges from the other side, rockets over more ramps, opens up on Sarmax. The two men roar parallel to one another as they exchange fire. Until Sarmax scores a direct hit on the Operative’s thrusters.

There’s an explosion. The Operative feels heat across his back. He feels like his spine just got severed. He fires the auxiliary jets on his wrists and ankles at full blast. They give him a tiny amount of leverage. Tiny—and nowhere near enough. He hurtles past more ramps, somehow dodges a crane. He veers beneath all that infrastructure, closes in on the sloping wall of the chamber. Rocks rush toward him. He feels something smash against his arm. He hits the ice and starts to slide. He extends claws on hands and feet. They shear inward. His arm is almost ripped from its socket as his visor slams up against the ice. The Operative retracts one hand, lets himself dangle outward. He takes in the situation. His shoulder racks are wrecked. He’s on a slope some thirty degrees in incline. He twists around to face that nightmare structure. He can see now how it’s built out over these slopes of ice. How it’s intended to allow drills to be shoved up against the surface. He can see the drills themselves, slung low along some of the platforms.

But he can also see Sarmax. A suit of armor far more together than his own, circling some twenty meters overhead.

“Carson. Didn’t I always tell you engines are more important than weapons?” The soaring flight pattern proclaims nothing save triumph. But the voice is almost sad.

“Fuck you,” says the Operative.

“On the contrary.”

“I may yet surprise you.”

“I don’t think anything that happens in what remains of your life is going to be the least bit surprising,”

says Sarmax. He swoops downward, fires a salvo five meters to the Operative’s left. Then another, five meters to the Operative’s right. “Though it’s funny it should come down to this, isn’t it? All those times and all those runs and it all ends up with you stuck to a wall like an insect. And all I need to do to make it official is grind my boot.”

“So get it over with,” says the Operative.

“Not before you tell me where Lynx is holed up.”

“Why the fuck should you want to know that?”

“So I can nail him too, Carson. Was that fuel sustaining your mind as well? I have to take him out lest they send more mechs for me.”

“They probably will anyway.”

“Nothing wrong with buying myself a little time. Where is he, Carson?”

“Surely you can pull the answer from my skull after you finish with me.”

“But it’d be so much easier if you told me.”

“You mean if I told the Rain, Sarmax.”

But Sarmax only laughs. “I’m not the
Rain,
Carson. I already said that. Besides, it’s not like the Rain’s a fucking secret to anyone who’s really in the know. No matter what they’re telling everyone else: it’s not like you and I don’t know exactly who we’re talking about.”

“Funny, that’s exactly what your bitch said to me before they snuffed her.”

And suddenly Sarmax’s lazy spiraling patterns cease. He swoops downward like a bird of prey, roaring in toward the Operative—and swerves aside at the last moment, hitting the slope a few meters up. He perches there, opens up with lasers on the ice to which his target’s clinging. At some point during this sequence of events, his voice becomes coherent enough for the Operative to understand it. Though Sarmax is doing nothing save cursing. He sounds like a demon who’s just been tossed from hell.

“That’s great,” says the Operative. The lasers whine scarcely centimeters from his visor. The ice is starting to get noticeably less solid. Water’s running across his suit. He digs his hands in deeper.

“Priceless. You getting a tape of yourself?”

“You I can forgive,” screams Sarmax. “After I kill you, that is. Lynx I can’t. It must get him so hard to see you and me set on each other like dogs. I’ll tear that motherfucker limb from limb. Fucking razor—living vicariously through all of us and never doing fuck-all himself.”

“Actually he’s been quite busy,” says the Operative. “He’s been in the tunnels of Agrippa for several days. He’s gone walkabout in the SpaceCom comps. I’m sure the Com would love to get the heads-up. Though I’ll be damned if they’re going to hear it from
you
.”

And with that, he fires a tether straight at Sarmax, strikes him full in the chest with a magnetic clamp. Before Sarmax can shear the cord away, the Operative is pumping out voltage from what’s left of his power packs. For an undamaged suit, that wouldn’t be much of a problem. For one as badly damaged as Sarmax’s, it’s a different story.

There’s a blinding flash. The Operative hears Sarmax curse. He relinquishes the tether, watches as Sarmax extends his body full off the ice, brings his hands forward with the well-practiced motion of someone starting his thrusters. But instead there’s another explosion and Sarmax tumbles onto the ice. He crashes into the Operative, knocks him from his weakened perch even as the two grapple. In this fashion they slide down the ice together.

They accelerate quickly. The infrastructure above them vanishes as though it’s being hauled upward on the back of a rocket. The darkness is near-total. It’s broken only by two things. One is the lights of both their suits. The other’s a red glow that’s starting to take shape beneath them. As that glow draws closer, the frenzied nature of their struggle intensifies.

“Do you recognize that light, Carson?” mutters Sarmax.

But the Operative says nothing. He’s intent on trying to somehow reverse the position of himself and Sarmax. He’s trying to shove Sarmax flush against the ice. He’s doing anything he can to put his opponent between him and whatever they’re about to run into.

“Carson,” says Sarmax.
“Do you recognize that light?”

They’re almost down amidst the glow. It’s not just one glow, either. It’s several. They’re stretching out on all sides.

“Like moths to the candle,” says Sarmax. “We’ll burn together.”

The Operative’s doing his damnedest to forestall it. For now he manages to get his leg out from under Sarmax’s—manages to lever it against Sarmax’s side. He shoves Sarmax down onto the ice beside him. He smashes his fist against Sarmax’s head. Sarmax is giving as good as he’s getting, if not better. But now their slide’s starting to get less steep. They’re starting to slow. Though only slightly.

“My furnaces,” says Sarmax. “We’ve reached rock bottom.”

And yet they’re still rushing downward. Now the Operative can see that the lights are really incandescent lines strung here and there, glowing through the dark. More infrastructure appears out of that gloom: more ramps, more chutes. More machinery.

“So simple,” says Sarmax. He sends a jet-powered glove at the Operative’s helmet—who pulls his head out of the way, grabs Sarmax’s arm, desperately tries to keep the jets off his visor. “This cavern must be one of the wonders of this world. It harbors the mother lode. We hammer off the ice. We shove it up against the wires. We pipe the water back to Shackleton. They ship it all the way to Congreve. We keep this rock running.”

“And it’ll keep on running long after you’re buried,” says the Operative. They slide writhing to a halt on the cusp of another edge. Lights glow all around. Water’s dripping down everywhere.

“Long after we both are,” says Sarmax. He pulls himself free of the Operative’s grip, leaps to a standing position—and is immediately tripped by the Operative. The momentum of his fall carries them both over the new edge. They hurtle downward once more. Both their suits are pretty much wrecked beyond repair. Neither has any functioning weapons save his own fists and feet. Neither has any power. In this manner they set about bringing the struggle to a finish. Each pays particular attention to the areas of the other’s armor that appear to be most damaged. Each does his utmost to shield those areas on his own suit from his opponent. Each strives desperately to use the other as shielding from the next impact. Each strives desperately to gain the upper hand.

They run headlong into the base of the lowermost lamp. The blow knocks them apart. For a moment the Operative lies stunned. Red-orange glow looms above him. Now that he’s up close, the Operative can see it’s really more of a giant filament wire, curled in upon itself. Ramps jut up around it. Some of them contain ice. Water falls down in a steady trickle upon his face, pours away in narrow channels situated for that purpose. But now his view is blotted out by Sarmax—who’s bending over the Operative with a half smile.

“Carson. You always knew it would come to this.”

“I guess I always did.”

“Then why did you come here in the first place?”

“What choice did I have?”

“You know I wasn’t dealing with the Rain.”

“But
she
was,” says the Operative.

Sarmax turns. He pivots forward. He looks for a moment like he’s going to put his boot straight through the Operative’s visor. But at the last moment he steps aside.

“You didn’t have to say that,” he says.

“They didn’t have to kill her.”

“No,” says Sarmax. “But I did.”

The Operative’s got such a head start on the afterlife that he’s almost beyond surprise. But he’s speechless anyway. He stares as tears well in the eyes of the man who was once his mentor.

“As you said,” mutters Sarmax. “She was dealing with the Rain. Didn’t mean I didn’t love her. She was…she was my Indigo. She was my everything. But she was dead set to join them. She was dead set to have me go with her.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“Maybe I should have. I’d still have been with her. But she wouldn’t have been with me. That’s the truth of the matter, Carson. I’d like to tell you I killed her because I was loyal. Because I was a Praetorian. Because I stood at the Throne’s right hand. But I’d be lying. I killed her because she loved the Rain more than she loved me. Time was I couldn’t imagine a world without her. Now I live it every day—this rock on the edge of existence, this mountain that might as well harbor all the souls of the ones who died that night.”

“Which is exactly why you can’t stay,” says the Operative softly.